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5. School aims a proposal

A more defensible alternative? A statement of national aims for the school curriculum The English School Curriculum aims at helping every young person to live a fulfilling life and to help others to do so. It does this within a framework of democratic citizenship in which each person is equally valued and each person is free to make their own decisions about how they are to lead their lives. Teachers and parents need a clear picture of the sort of person we would like a young person to become. This means thinking about the personal qualities that, by and large, we consider important such things as wholehearted absorption in activities and relationships, kindness, respect for others as equals, independence of spirit, enjoying working with others towards shared goals. In a modern democratic society possessing these and other personal qualities requires a broad experience of a range of different activities as well as extensive knowledge and understanding about human nature, the rest of the natural world, our own and other societies. It also depends on possessing the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. Presented below is a fuller account of these personal qualities, experiences, and kinds of understanding. Basic skills will henceforth be taken as read. For conveniences sake, the account is divided into four sections, but there are no sharp divisions between them. The first section is about the young persons own well-being, but this overlaps with the second and third, which are both about helping other people to flourish. The last section is about further personal qualities we all need in order to succeed.

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1. Personal fulfilment We want all young people to have a successful life. This means success in worthwhile activities and relationships which they have freely engaged in and which they pursue wholeheartedly. Teachers and parents should help young people to experience a range of absorbing activities (eg community involvement, artistic and literary activities, the pursuit of knowledge, helping others, forms of work and enterprise, sport and exercise, making things, love of nature) make choices within this range and engage in some activities more fully participate wholeheartedly in preferred activities achieve success in different areas of activity engage in and sustain close and caring relationships when young and in later life acquire knowledge and understanding necessary for all the above

However they find fulfilment, all young people have basic needs which will have to be met. So teachers and parents should help them to live a healthy lifestyle and understand what makes for this (eg diet, exercise, safety, emotional well-being) make competent decisions in relation to managing money and planning their finances for the future become discerning and critical consumers understand the basic prerequisites of a fulfilling life (eg health, food, clean air and water, housing, income, education, a peaceful society, various freedoms.)

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2. Social and civic involvement We have seen that what makes for ones own fulfilment is closely intertwined with other peoples. With this in mind, we want pupils to be truthful, fair, trustworthy, decent, tolerant, generous, respectful, friendly, well-disposed, sympathetic, helpful. Teachers and parents should help young people to enjoy working with others towards shared goals and in a variety of roles relate to and communicate with other people appropriately in various contexts understand and manage interpersonal conflicts, negotiate and compromise where appropriate reflect on our human nature, its commonality and diversity, its heights and depths, and its relation to other parts of the natural order

We also want pupils, as citizens in the making, to be committed to such basic democratic values as political equality, self-determination, freedom of thought and action. We want them to treat each person as of equal intrinsic importance, to challenge discrimination and stereotyping, and to be concerned for the well-being of other people as well as themselves, in their own society and beyond it. With this in mind, teachers should help them to play a helpful part in the life of the school, neighbourhood, community and the wider world participate in democratic practices within the school and the community understand and respect cultural and community diversity, in both national and global contexts be aware of their own and others responsibilities and rights as citizens critically assess the social roles and influence of the media in 27

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a modern democracy gain an understanding of the modern world and the place of England and the UK within it be aware of some of the ethical issues arising from scientific, technological and social change critically reflect on the aims of their schooling and on how to prioritise them

3. Contribution to the economy Interesting work can be a major contributor to personal fulfilment as well as being beneficial to others. We want young people to have the qualities required in a changing economy such as enterprise, flexibility, independence, cooperativeness and willingness to take risks. They should also be sensitive to the environmental issues connected with economic changes, locally and globally. We want them to respect the needs of both present and future generations and conflicts that may arise. With these values in mind, teachers should help young people to work collaboratively in the production of goods or services for eg. the school, people in the local community, people overseas be aware of the rights of workers and employers critically examine how wealth is created and distributed, nationally and world-wide understand the economic interdependence of individuals, organisations and communities locally, nationally and globally understand the wide range of jobs from which they may choose be aware of the impact of science, technology and global markets on work patterns and prospects understand the local and international implications of lifestyle

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choices and economic development for the environment

4. Practical wisdom Whatever we do in life, in order to succeed we all need good practical judgement. Parents and teachers can help young people to acquire it. They need to be able to think rationally, imaginatively and flexibly about means to ends and to keep priorities and conflicts among their goals and values under review. In acting on their decisions they need confidence, perseverance and patience. They have to sensibly manage their desires (eg for food, drink, sex, attention and recognition) and emotions (eg their fears, sympathies, feelings of resentment and of low self-worth). They have to learn to cope with set-backs, changes of circumstance, and uncertainty. They should be taught to resist undue pressure and challenges from peer groups, authority figures, the media, public opinion, self-deception. They should learn how to manage their own time, take the initiative, strike a sensible balance between risktaking and caution. They also need good judgement on the intellectual side. This depends on possessing such qualities as clarity, objectivity, respect for evidence, and independence of thought.

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6. Rationale
Facing the deeper problems. The help that philosophy can give. These are the aims I would propose for the school curriculum. They already contain something of a rationale. But this needs to be filled out. References to teachers and parents remind us that the school curriculum is not self-contained. It has its place in the wider upbringing of the child. What parents want for their children usually overlaps considerably with what teachers want for them. Of course, teachers have more specialised functions within the overall picture. It is by and large teachers rather than parents who will be making children aware of the impact of science, technology and global markets on work patterns and prospects or helping them to critically examine how wealth is created and distributed, nationally and world-wide. But even here there is no sharp division of labour. Where parents know about such things, there is every reason why they should talk about them with their children. On a broad understanding of education, parents are educators as much as teachers are and both parties should see themselves as working together on an equal footing. The aims do not pretend to be value-neutral. They are about preparing young people to live in a democratic society, not in an autocracy. The argument below gives some reasons why a democratic polity is desirable, although a fuller justification must come from elsewhere. As we saw above, the assumption that democracy is desirable lies behind the case for political rather than professional control of aims in the first place. Much of the aims statement is self-explanatory. I wont go through it line by line, but will concentrate on the pivotal idea in its very first sentence.

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The English School Curriculum aims at helping every young person to live a fulfilling life and to help others to do so. The pivotal idea is personal fulfilment, the pupils and other peoples. It should not be surprising that individual well-being should figure so prominently. We have come, rightly, to take it as a central preoccupation of a democratic society to help everyone to achieve it. The horse-drawn, mid-Victorian age when the traditional school curriculum was growing in power was not only pre-democratic. It also tended, officially at least, to rate moral uprightness incomparably higher as a life-ideal than personal flourishing. In this it reflected the Christian notion that whatever bliss awaits us, if indeed it does, in a life after death, our task on this earth is dutifully to follow Gods prescriptions. To make the individuals well-being the focus of education would have seemed to most Victorians a recipe for selfishness. Something of that way of thinking remains today, but it has no good basis. Most of us are very conscious that this life is the only life we each have and we want to enjoy it to the full. Our education can help us to achieve this. This does not mean it helps to make us selfish. One persons flourishing is typically closely intertwined with other peoples. I will come back to this later. We need to be more reflective about the role of schools in promoting personal flourishing. Whatever their official aims, or lack of them, schools are widely seen as arenas of competition for success in public examinations and access to well-paid jobs. This in turn is connected with a picture of a fulfilling life as [a] closely tied to money, recognition, power and [b] more easily attainable by those who succeed in the competition. This picture has a poor understanding of fulfilment. It is also heartless. It is as if an older, religious way of thinking that divided people into 32

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those who will be saved and the rest now has a this-world counterpart. But if we believe that everyone, and not only some, should be helped to make the most of their one short life, we need a different starting point. One thing is right about this conventional picture of well-being. It identifies a flourishing life with a successful one. But its notion of success is too narrow. It is success in attaining a range of positional goods, part of the enjoyment of which can be related to their exclusiveness attendance at a good university, a well-paid professional job, lite housing and leisure activities. This notion of success by definition excludes those who drop behind in the race. There is a wider, more inclusive notion. This is briefly mentioned in the section on Personal Fulfilment above. This states that We want all young people to have a successful life. This means success in worthwhile activities and relationships which they have freely engaged in and which they pursue wholeheartedly. A lot is compressed into this statement and needs explanation. It is the hub of this paper. Compare two imaginary lives. Both of them happen to involve the same kinds of activities and relationships. The two people both earn a living as gardeners, have close relationships with their husbands and children, have many friends, are both keen on bird-watching and cooking. For one of the women all these things turn out well; while the other suffers misfortunes throughout her life, causing her to fall short in most of her relationships and things she does. The first woman has had a more fulfilling life than the second. Her life has been more successful. This kind of contrast between lives can exist in any human society. We can imagine a traditional tribal society of several thousand years ago, in which two men are both warriors, fathers, brothers, hunters, spear33

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makers, worshippers of the local gods. As in the previous story, one of them does all these things well, while the other, because of ill-health, a series of accidents and other calamities, fails across the board. It is scarcely controversial to say that the first man has had a more fulfilling life than the second. Even with some non-human animals one can make the same kind of distinction. A pet dog who gets on well with family members, is able to romp around the garden and lope around the fields leads a more flourishing life than one penned up and abused in other ways. Like many other animals, human beings are active, social creatures, whose well-being is a function of how successfully they are able to live as such. In a modern, liberal democratic society successful engagement in activities and relationships is not the whole story. For most of us, these have to be freely engaged in. The warriors in our traditional society had no choice about whether to be warriors, husbands, spear-makers. These were prescribed for them by tribal custom. But in our society we take it as read that we enter freely into our sexual and other relationships, choose our own work and non-work pursuits, decide for ourselves our stances towards religion or politics. Personal autonomy is, for nearly all of us, an inalienable component of our well-being. Hence the expression freely engaged in in the passage from Section 1 above. This passage also mentions wholeheartedness. One can enter into activities and relationships in a lacklustre way, with constant and crippling reservations about whether one is doing the best thing. Contrast this with someone who throws herself into what she is doing with enthusiasm and commitment. It is not contentious, I think, that for the most part halfheartedness detracts from a flourishing life while wholeheartedness adds to it. A last item in the passage from Section 1 is more controversial. It is the reference to worthwhileness. A flourishing life, it implies, is one in 34

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which we are successful in worthwhile activities and relationships. What count as such and why? An obvious danger is paternalism. People differ over what they see as worthwhile and it is all too easy to impose ones own value-judgements on others. This may happen in education and schooling not least. Some believe, for instance, that intellectual and artistic activities pursued for their own sake are goods of higher value than any others. But are they right? Or are they really talking about their own personal preferences? If someone else says that travelling around the world from surf beach to surf beach is no less worthwhile than reading Chekhov or studying atomic physics, are they wrong? It is tempting at this point to conclude that judgements of worthwhileness must be subjective. People rate activities and relationships differently. We vary enormously in our preferences and the notion of a fulfilled life should respect this. True, we cannot go by just any old preferences. Sometimes people want things - drink, drugs, sexual activity with children - and hate themselves for wanting them. If flourishing is to depend on individual preferences, these must at least be ones with which one can fully identify, ones gladly embraced once one understands them fully, including their consequences. In modern societies like our own a subjectivist account of a flourishing life is immensely attractive. It fits in with our attachment to autonomy. No one is going to tell us how to lead our lives. We make our own decisions about what is important to us. Just as we are sovereign choosers in the market place when it comes to goods and services, so we are sovereign choosers in the sphere of worthwhileness. If the subjectivist view is correct, this has tremendous implications for what the aims of education should be and for the school curriculum. It suggests that education should be about preparing young people to become fully-fledged autonomous choosers, not only of goods and services, activities and relationships, but also of some at least of their 35

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own values. They are the final authority on whether something counts as worthwhile. This is a beguiling position which seems to mesh well with the liberalism of our age. But it is a claim without a solid basis and we have no reason to accept it. It seems to be based on a conflation with something else. In a liberal society people are not to be prevented from doing what they want assuming this doesnt harm others. Valuejudgements about the worthwhileness of their choices do not come into the picture. Adults are free to watch comic strips on TV for eighteen hours every day, or to spend their autumns counting every leaf that falls from the trees in their garden. The mere fact that someone makes it a major goal to do something, having thought about implications and alternatives, does not imply that it is a worthwhile activity. If we are sceptical about whether the leaf-counter is doing something worthwhile, this is because we are already operating with some kind of implicit standard which casts doubt on this. We know that if anything is worthwhile in this world, having close, intimate relations with a good friend is an example. We know that looking at or wandering in natural beauty, playing with our children, listening to music, working as a nurse or a teacher, can also be valuable in themselves as well as for other purposes. It is not up to the individual to decide what is worthwhile over the broad field, that is: I am assuming that people will have their own weightings among values within this. We are born into a world redolent with values. If we are fortunate, we find ourselves among all kinds of valuable pursuits and kinds of relationship. Our life is short and we could not, even if we wished, engage in them all. In a liberal society we are brought up to make our own choices and priorities. This can bring with it regret when we have to reject one worthwhile option for the sake of another. Values are not static. They are invented, develop, form new categories 36

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and genres. The last four hundred years of Western history, especially, have contributed to this process not surprisingly, for it has been over this time that religious understandings of the world have been gradually replaced by secular attitudes far more concerned with this-world fulfilment. Being a clinical psychologist is a form of work virtually unknown before the twentieth century; just as working on a computer help desk was unknown much before the twenty-first. Both can be fulfilling; both bring with them their own forms of worthwhileness. The values they contain helping others, possessing and intelligently applying knowledge and so on are not, in their general form, unique to them but the particular shape they have and the way they are combined are unique. The last two centuries have seen an immense proliferation of fulfilling kinds of work, many or most unknown in a pre-industrial age. (They have also seen a huge expansion of unfulfilling forms of labour). Extend the period back a century or two and you find equally impressive changes in intimate relationships. The modern idea of marriage as something freely entered into by both parties and based on love and companionship is an institution with roots in sixteenth and seventeenth century Puritanism. This pattern of married love, in its turn, has generated further variants: romantic conceptions of it, companionate marriages, open marriages, stable unmarried partnerships, gay and lesbian unions There is no need to go into further examples of worthwhile activities in such detail. In field after field one could tell a similar story. Think of the invention of and variations in new sports and outdoor activities over that period. Think of the burgeoning of forms and genres of music. Think of developments in home-making, in gardening, in foreign travel, in scholarship, in teaching, in socialising, in bringing up children.

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These values are not relative to the culture in which they were formed. We may owe the institution of marriage based on affection to the Puritans, but it is still important to us even though its religious connotations are now largely forgotten. Mozarts music was created in a princely society, yet its value did not die when that society faded away. There is now a huge and still proliferating array of activities and relationships in which a young person can find fulfilment some of them, like listening to music whenever one wants to, not open even to princes a hundred years ago. One purpose of education, at home and at school, should be to acquaint children with much of this array. Hence the aims found in the list above, that teachers and parents should help young people to experience a range of absorbing activities (eg community involvement, artistic and literary activities, the pursuit of knowledge, helping others, forms of work and enterprise, sport and exercise, making things, love of nature) engage in and sustain close and caring relationships when young and in later life

This induction into a world of values is also an induction into judgements of relative worth. Sometimes such judgements are impossible. Is reading Scott Fitzgerald of higher value than walking in the woods or spending an evening with friends? Major values are often incommensurable. Even in the same area of activity this can be true. Is jazz less valuable than classical music? But sometimes distinctions can be made. Some dramas some soap operas, for example are stereotyped and sentimental. They are not totally lacking in worth, but they are without the rich spectrum of values found in other works. Some forms of employment, too, are more fulfilling than others. It is hard to keep working wholeheartedly in a job 38

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so undemanding that it bores one to tears within a week or two. Activities and relationships that for whatever reason reaffirmation of ones central values, complexity, propensity to open up new avenues, sheer sensuous beauty never pall are generally held to be among the most worthwhile. Young people need to acquire discernment about such matters. Not that there is a body of genuine experts on the good life (although there are many pretenders) who can tell them just how valuable some item is. Those with wide experience of valuable activities are in a better position to judge than outsiders. But expertise is not neatly demarcated. Everyone can participate in these assessments to some degree. They are the stuff of conversation, everyday and more sophisticated. Young people can and should be initiated into this kind of reflectiveness. In the process they will be participating in shaping and reshaping the culture. One aim of education, therefore, is to unlock many doors, to acquaint young people with components of a flourishing life and encourage reflection on them, the degrees of value they contain, and priorities among them. In youth as in later life people cannot throw themselves into all of them. They need guidance in finding their own way through them, in locating those that suit them best and in which they can participate with commitment and success. Hence the three further aims in Section 1, that teachers and parents should help young people to make choices within this range and engage in some activities more fully participate wholeheartedly in preferred activities achieve success in different areas of activity

Needless to say, students are not making once-for-all choices. They will be putting their toes into all sorts of other waters throughout their 39

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lives. But as apprentices in the art of living well, they need early experience of enjoyable and successful activity. Schools can help them to acquire it. The aim that follows these, that that teachers and parents should help young people to acquire knowledge and understanding necessary for all the above should be self-explanatory. Being acquainted with, and participating more fully in, worthwhile activities depends on understanding what they involve. Being a vet requires a knowledge of biology; intimacy and friendship, an understanding of human nature. (Not that there is a dichotomy between values and knowledge here, since the objects of knowledge are themselves impregnated with value). In this vision of education factual knowledge may well not have the same rationale as it has had in the academic tradition discussed earlier. But it is of huge importance nevertheless. This whole discussion has assumed learners who, if they are to flourish, will not be plagued by hunger, poverty, disease, oppression. This brings us to the infrastructure of fulfilment, so to speak, the satisfaction of our basic needs. Food, clothing, fresh air, health, housing, income are all, to some degree or other, necessary conditions of well-being. There are also psychological and social needs. Without others company, a certain amount of recognition for our achievements and qualities, a peaceful society, a decent upbringing, freedom of thought and action, personal fulfilment is difficult or impossible. Education should play a large role in this area, too. Hence the aims listed at the end of Section 1. * * *

You may be uneasy about the argument so far. It has been all about 40

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young peoples personal fulfilment. No mention of their moral obligations. No recognition of the danger of creating a society of egoists, all intent on pursuing their own fulfilment. This reaction is understandable, but mistaken. First, and perhaps surprisingly, the argument has at no point advocated young peoples pursuing their own good. It has been all about their engaging in activities and relationships. And that is a different thing. They can get absorbed in friendships, work experience, cycling, links with Africa, reading novels, designing a new entrance to the school without having the thought that they are doing these things to promote their own flourishing. Doing these things successfully does promote this, regardless of whether they have this goal in mind. The aims-statement is far from a recipe for the selfish pursuit of self-interest. Neither has altruism been neglected. It is a fallacy that when my own well-being is being furthered, this does not also often further other peoples. If friendship is a good for me, it is a good for my friends, too. In any cooperative activity there are shared purposes. Personally fulfilling work , as well as typically being collaborative, also typically benefits other people. The intertwining of ones own good and that of other peoples is emphasised at many places in the statement of aims. It is found in the many aims in Sections 2 and 3 explicitly of an altruistic or civic sort. Playing a helpful part in the life of the school or the community can be both personally fulfilling as well as of benefit to others. So can the other civic and work-related aims mentioned in these sections. To what extent there can be conflict between what is good for me and what what is good for others raises complex philosophical questions that cannot be argued through in a pamphlet like this. The Further Reading section has more on this. If you are more inclined than I am to stress conflict rather than overlap, do remember that my list of aims also contains many items that are uncontroversially altruistic. These are 41

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directly about other peoples welfare and about contributions that the learner can make to this. I feel I do not need to say much more about Sections 2 and 3. The connexions between these items and the master aim of helping every young person to lead a fulfilling life and helping others to do so should be reasonably clear. The only thing to accentuate is their implicit attachment to equality of respect. I am taking it as read that we should treat everyone, like ourselves, as needing to lead a flourishing life. This is the basis of the democratic principle of political equality, as exemplified in the notion of one person, one vote. It rules out preening ourselves on our own perceived superiority to others of a different nation, religion, social class or race. It rules out seeking power over others as a way of underlining their subordinateness. Equality of respect is not the same as equality of wealth or income, neither does it imply it. At the same time, what has already been said about basic needs, the necessary conditions of flourishing, provides an argument for everyone having sufficient resources, resources well above those available to poor people in this country and elsewhere. Over egalitarian issues like these it may seem as if ones own wellbeing and that of others can diverge. Why cant what is best for me be to enjoy as much power over others as possible? This brings us back to that central philosophical issue that needs to be thrashed over elsewhere. Here I will say only this. On the subjectivist account of well-being, if dominating others is a major goal of mine and I am fully informed about its implications, my success in achieving it counts towards my flourishing. I have rejected subjectivism in favour of a historically developing and incomplete, needless to say - consensus on worthwhile pursuits among those who have reflected on this. There has been next to no support within this consensus for including among these pursuits lording it over others and reducing them to fear and fawning. On the contrary, fictional and non-fictional writing as well as other vehicles of reflection over the last four centuries have tended to 42

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converge in scorning power-hungriness and holding it up to ridicule. Section 4 of the aims is on practical wisdom. This is a quality we need to sustain us in living a flourishing personal and social life. It is about making appropriate judgements about what to do in particular situations, including, not least, those where values conflict. Among other things, this section should speak to those concerned about obesity in young people, over-attachment to computers and television, the power of peer groups and advertisers. Since this section presents a major divergence from the academic tradition of education, I have described what I mean by practical wisdom in a longish paragraph. I hope that, given what I have already said about personal flourishing, this should make sense as it stands. A longer publication than an IMPACT paper would find room for the fuller philosophical justification that this whole approach to educational aims ideally requires. In a short paper there is a limit to what one can do.

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